Demotions

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

The demotion removes her from the elite Senior Executive Service and reassigns her to a lesser job in the corps' civil works division.

Ms. Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an "obvious reprisal" for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in Iraq.

Dick Cheney led Halliburton, which is based in Texas, before he became vice president.

Yes. I wish this was more shocking than it is. A 20 year Army Contracting official with outstanding service reviews, is demoted after raising serious questions over the no-bid contracting policy of The Administration with a company, Halliburton, who was previously helmed by the very top Administration officials, in the build-up to the by-choice invasion of another country by The Administration.

I'm not saying this is a conspiracy, or even convenient. In fact, the AntiCentenarian feels that it is convenient for those who doubt that this stuff goes on in The Administraiton. But we're not alone:

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

It's clear that Ms. Greenhouse was targeted due to "poor job performance," but remember, her job was to raise issues with the way that the Army was contracting corporations in the interest of the Army. It clearly struck her as being not in the interest of the Army to have a no-bid contract with a huge corporation that is so deeply invested in the upcoming war.